"Ah … I promised news of yesterday's Queen band meeting. Well, it was just Roger and Jim Beach and myself … we are a small cottage industry !! Our main agenda was the Freddie film … which, I'm happy to tell you, is on course. Much of our discussion was about contractual things … it's pretty complex …. and determining who is responsible for what. The pieces are all falling into place, though we are now on a slightly later schedule - filming is now scheduled to start in the Spring, with Sacha Baron Cohen playing Freddie. The film should be ready for release early in 2014. We did make some other plans, but they will have to stay under wraps for now. Being in Queen is – bizarrely – as full of surprising twists and turns as ever - 40 years since we first got together, and 20 years after losing Freddie. But of course Freddie is in so many ways very much alive. He must be wryly smiling somewhere !!!"

C'est mal barré cette histoire de film finalement...

Citation:

Freddie biopic in more trouble

The long-awaited movie based on the life of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury has run into more problems.

Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen, who’d been hired to play Mercury in the biopic, has quit the project after becoming unhappy with developments.

Deadline.com reports: “The reason is that the band wanted to make more of a PG movie about Queen, while Cohen was counting on a gritty tell-all centred round the gifted gay singer.

Shooting was planned to begin two years ago, under producer Robert De Niro. The story, written by Peter Morgan, followed the band from their formative years until their iconic performance at Live Aid in 1985.

Movie firm GK Films said in 2010: “Queen is one of the greatest rock bands of all time, and a music brand unto itself.

“Freddie was an awe-inspiring performer, so with Sacha in the starring role, coupled with Peter’s screenplay and the support of Queen, we have the perfect combination to tell the real story behind their success.”

British actor turned director Dexter Fletcher has been named as the man who’ll bring the long-awaited Queen movie to the silver screen.

And actor Ben Whishaw, who played Q in James Bond movie Skyfall, has been lined up to play Freddie Mercury after Sacha Baron-Cohen bowed out.

Fletcher, who appeared in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Hotel Babylon and Band Of Brothers, most recently directed musical film Sunshine On Leith.

Hollywood news outlet Deadline reports: “Fletcher has been meeting the band and getting a feel for the Queen story and the intention is for the movie to get up and running next year.

“Among the tunes that are in the rights package are Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions and Another One Bites The Dust.”

Last week Queen guitarist Brian May told Classic Rock: “It’s taken us a long time, partly because we need to get the right people together, and the right script.

“We had a problem knowing what the film was actually about, but a few weeks ago we sat down with who we think is our great new director, and it dawned on us all that what it’s really about is a family.”

The script, written by Peter Morgan, is believed to cover the band’s career from their earliest days until their triumphant performance at Live Aid in 1985.

QUEEN guitarist Brian May has confirmed that the band will release a new album later this year featuring previously unreleased songs sung by late QUEEN frontman Freddie Mercury.

May and QUEEN drummer Roger Taylor recently put finishing touches on some of Mercury's 1983 demos with Michael Jackson. In addition to that, the other "lost" Mercury tracks in the QUEEN vaults include collaborations with David Bowie, Andy Gibb, and Rod Stewart.

Speaking to BBC Wales on May 23, May said (hear audio below): "We found a few more tracks with Freddie singing and all of us playing, and they are quite beautiful. So people will be hearing this work towards the end of the year. We are gonna put out an album which probably is called 'Queen Forever'. And it's a compilation, but it will have this new material which nobody in the world has ever heard. I think people will really enjoy it."

Asked to describe the unreleased tracks featuring Mercury, May said: "Most of it comes from the '80s when we were in full flight. So it's is quite emotional. It is the big, big ballads and the big, big epic sound. It wouldn't have been if we hadn't have done this restoration job. We had to start from scratch, because we only had scraps. But knowing how it would have happened if we had finished it, I can sit there and make it happen with modern technology. And we have Pro Tools these days; and you can do almost anything in Pro Tools."_________________UNCHAINED - Infernal Death Machine (le clip !)UNCHAINED - No Scapegoat to Blame